Examples Of Solitary Confinement

Solitary Confinement as Cruel and Unusual Punishment “Deprived of all human contact, you lose your feeling of connectedness to the world. You lose your ability to make small talk, even with the guard who shoves your meal through the slot in the door. You live in your head, for there is nothing else.” The featured quote is by a man named Wilbert Rideau, who served almost 44 years for manslaughter in Louisiana State Penitentiary. During his time in isolation he counted his cell’s 358 rivets repeatedly (Wash. Editorial Board). His bitter decades spent counting the rivets of his cell is ultimately a cruel, horrible punishment. This is everyday life for people like Wilbert Rideau. Solitary confinement is known to not only not fix the problems

If you can not wrap your mind around that it is about the size of a king-sized mattress. Inside the cell a toilet, a bed, a sink, and sometimes a desk with an un-movable chair (Fetting). The practice of solitary confinement is with out a doubt a cruel punishment, but it is no longer unusual. Approximately 80,000 people are held in solitary in prisons all throughout the United States (Vazquez). For 23 hours a day the door is locked, but everyday the inmates are allowed to exercise in a cage for hour (Breslow). Human contact with others is practically nonexistent. Solitary confinement is is a practice that is decided upon by the discretion of the prison staff. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over 500 prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison in California have been isolation for over a decade

Stuart Grassian, a board-certified psychiatrist and a former faculty member from the Medical School at Harvard, has interviewed hundreds of prisoners in solitary confinement (Breslow). In one of his studies, Grassian discovered that approximately 1 out of 3 prisoners in isolation “were actively psychotic and/or acutely suicidal.” With his newly discovered knowledge, Grassian has discovered that solitary can cause a specific psychiatric syndrome, which include hallucinations, panic attacks, overt paranoia, diminished impulse control, hypersensitivity to external stimuli, and difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory (Breslow). A few of the convicts lost their ability to maintain their sense of alertness, while others discovered newfound obsessions which crippled any chance of progress. The mental heath risks are horrible, the punishment is not rehabilitating prisoners but making them more dangerous to the outside